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Flaherty’s other mixture “which caused the market to over heat in the first place”

Let see if the ‘other mixture’ caused the market to over heat then what happens when you take that mixture away? Pretty simple answer. The sad part is Rick Mercer is the only guy on CBC who gets it. You would think for a few billion a year in tax payer dollars the CBC could do a few stories on what is really happening with housing in Canada.

Did I imagine this? Last night on the treadmill I could have sworn Global did a piece on the Chinese real estate market possibly melting down. They covered the ghost cities and ghost condos. Granted, it’s a 4-yr old story by now but it would have been scary for the regular Global TV viewer who is used to seeing only good news on the Chinese real estate investment front.

But then again, maybe I was running too fast and became oxygen deprived.

I’m tired of RE agents trying to connect on LinkedIn. During last year every week I have requests from people whom I never met. Why would I want to have dozens of RE agents in my connections? I just keep ignoring them, but it seems like they are becoming desperate.

I guess Vancouver’s real estate cartel is going to be beating this theme to death, since they mentioned it 3 times in their press release.

Home buyer demand remains below historical averages in the Greater Vancouver housing market. This has led some home sellers to remove their homes from the market in recent months.”

“It appears many home sellers are opting to remove their homes from the market rather than settle for a price they don’t want,” Eugen Klein, REBGV president said.”

“When a home seller isn’t receiving the kind of offers they want, there comes a point when they decide to either lower the price or remove the home from the market. Right now, it seems many home sellers are opting for the latter,” Klein said.”

regardless of that odd thumbs down. TED Talks is a coup for the region. It is also counters the idea that Vancouver is some backwater city with a nice view. The conference attracts alot of thinkers, big names, and sells out, even at thousands of dollars a pop.

We may not be Hong Kong, New York, etc, but Van has shown to be very attractive to the outside world.

It seems like they are encouraging people to take their houses off the market, but I have to wonder why. I would have thought that encouraging them to drop their prices would mean more money in the realtor’s pockets.

“We may not be Hong Kong, New York, etc, but Van has shown to be very attractive to the outside world.”

Really? Read the article again:

The move to Vancouver has come after lengthy negotiations with a consortium made up of the federal Canadian Tourism Commission, the provincially run Vancouver Convention Centre, and Tourism Vancouver.

In other words, the only reason they’re here is because of sponsorship by the various levels of government. It’s really starting to bother me that the government has been paying big dollars to attract these things to Vancouver – the Olympics, the Bollywood awards, the film industry, and now this.

It’s pathetic, and it shows exactly why this is not the “world class city” that so many people here are so obsessed with. Los Angeles doesn’t need to lobby or pay the Academy to host the Oscars every year. They are there because LA is a major entertainment center. Silicon Valley didn’t become the tech center of the world because of government intervention. And if you Google “Sir John Cowperthwaite”, you will learn that the reason that Hong Kong became an economic powerhouse is precisely because the British explicitly decided not to intervene in its economic development.

Here’s a prediction: in 2 years, the TED talks will leave Vancouver after realizing we are not anywhere near the center of the universe – technologically, economically, academically, or otherwise. Once the government cash runs out there will be no reason to stick around.

N: “It seems like they are encouraging people to take their houses off the market, but I have to wonder why. I would have thought that encouraging them to drop their prices would mean more money in the realtor’s pockets.”

Realtors in aggregate make money from more buyers not from more listings. What they are trying to do is encourage more buyers to buy now and not wait for prices to come down. Individual realtors who list properties would definitely be encouraging sellers to drop their price but it doesn’t make sense for the cartel to make that public because it would send a message to buyers prices will continue to come down. This would result in less buyers which is what they don’t want. Unfortunately for them that is what we are seeing across BC.

Not sure what the strategy is around framing the normal, as in happens every year, drop in listings through the fall and to Jan. 1st as a result of sellers not wanting to budge on prices. The fact is that we see this behaviour in both falling and rising markets. The cynic in me says that the REBGV and FVREB are trying to pull some more buyers out of the woodwork by scaring them into thinking that sellers won’t budge on price and if you don’t act now on your dream home the seller just might pull it off the market!

“When a home seller isn’t receiving the kind of offers they want, there comes a point when they decide to either lower the price or remove the home from the market. Right now, it seems many home sellers are opting for the latter,” Klein said.”

Troll: “The cynic in me says that the REBGV and FVREB are trying to pull some more buyers out of the woodwork by scaring them into thinking that sellers won’t budge on price and if you don’t act now on your dream home the seller just might pull it off the market!”

While there is no doubt the governments involved dangled a few carrots in front of the organizers of TED talks in order to guarantee the economic spinoffs and benefits, the fact is there are still minimum thresholds for host cities to meet. If Regina, Calgary or a host of other cities offered said carrots, would the organizers be willing to bite. I don’t believe they would – Vancouver does have attributes that mesh well with this type of event (marketing wise).

Regarding Hong Kong – it was largely geographic. It developed since it was the natural bridge to Asia following the British take-over. Laissez faire policies played a role, but it was hardly the only factor in understanding Hong Kong’s success. Also, try not to cherry-pick Asian economic development. In countries like South Korea, Taiwan, and at one point Japan, economic growth was the result of industry-specific government-sponsored incentives and regulations.

…and Whistler condos down 47.5% in the past 5 yrs. I recall they put a moratorium on new construction in Whistler 5 or 10 yrs ago…and they’re saying Vancouver’s geography will prevent prices from falling?

“When a home seller isn’t receiving the kind of offers they want, there comes a point when they decide to either lower the price or remove the home from the market. Right now, it seems many home sellers are opting for the latter”

Like I said it before, I don’t think developers with projects full of unsold inventory have this luxury. They will cut their prices first or offer incentives that are of equal value. In fact they are already doing it.

Vanpire “Like I said it before, I don’t think developers with projects full of unsold inventory have this luxury.”

There are plenty of sellers that do not have this luxury. Death, divorce, job transfer, loss of job, expanding family, elderly that need to downsize or assisted living, unexpected repair bills like leaky condos, speculators with limited capital are a few more.

Feeling more and more like a turn in market sentiment is on its way. Barrons and G&M similtaneously run P1 stories exhorting virtue of stocks, Davos summit concludes the financial crisis is over, a well-regarded portfolio manager I know who had turned bearish over the past year just fired. You can almost feel the “get me in clamour” in the markets.

Meanwhile, is that a breadown from a long flat-line top in Home Capital Group? MIC finally creaking? The playing field of Canadian housing is showing crash/correction nationwide … maybe it is time for the scoreboard of the stock market to start playing catch-up. Also note, February was the top month in 2007 for the MSCI World, Commodities bull market of 2011 topped in early March.

I feel TSX ex-commodities are within 6 weeks of a top here, sentiment wise. Gold group maybe an exception.

REBGV are saying sellers are choosing to remove listing because in reality, they know that no matter what they say, sellers sell because they have to. So given what they say about sellers removing their listing has no effect on the sellers, they have hoping this will have an effect on the buyers.

The virtue of stocks is that you can unload them and settle the funds in two business days. Like the partipants in RE speculation, most only check to see how they are doing after the mainstream media tells them they are wiped out or when the monthly statement arrives in the mail.

FYI, Genworth and Home Capital usually both announce quarterly dividends in the next couple weeks:

Not sure what mental distrubance is gripping the holders of HCG with only 1.5% yield and trending down. Maybe they only check their statements once a year or believe mortgage lending still has some upside?

If the inventory figures for the Comox Valley on central Vancouver Island are anything to go by the real estate market has totally collapsed on this part of the Island. MLS Inventory in January around 785 units. Sales 36 units. Months of inventory, 22.

These figures do not include shadow inventory (not MLS but much of it listed by Realtors on alternate sites) which appears to be very large but virtually impossible to measure. And of course does not include sales of same some of which may or may not be listed as MLS sales. Thus figures given are very conservative and devastatingly bad.

On a side note,
Be careful out there, there will be a more frustrated and distracted people out there which probably will reflect in road rage and distracted driving..
I am receiving a lot of scam calls.
I noted at work more irritation and stressed co workers.

As VCI is filtering posts with supporting reference links you may never see my earlier post about MIC and HCG dividend schedules. Apparently if a post has more than one reference link it is filtered. That is an interesting filter rule. One link is OK but two or more links is automatically filtered. Couldn’t an offending post have just one link? VCI admin, please review your defaults and consider usefulness…

Here is one without links in the (apparently) preferred unsubstantiated style.

HCG July 2013 PUT open interest has ticked up very recently. No change in July calls…

Or put another way, if prices don’t rise between March and June, that’s bad. And if prices do rise a bit from March to June, that’s not exactly good. Just look at those 2.27% and 2.40% rises in 2012 and 2008.

Forget the spin, but for rhetoric’s sake I’ll put it in caps: “BULLS” NEED HEALTHY PRICE GAINS IN THE SPRING OR CHANCES ARE IT WILL BE VEWY VEWY BAD IN THE FALL.

I have seen some Whistler apartments at 70% off the original prices paid in 2007 as of recent, remember when times are tuff the toys are the 1st to go…lotsa foreclosures and Harleys for sale
..it’ll be interesting to see how boat sales do at this week’s boat show, car sales a little weak too a ton of lease takeovers available… Not to mentiondebt reconsolidation business is booming what’s everyone else seeing put here on the front lines?
.

“The economy as we know it is facing a lethal confluence of four critical factors–the fall out from the biggest debt bubble in history; a disastrous experiment with globalisation; the massaging of data to the point where economic trends are obscured; and, most important of all, the approach of an energy-returns cliff-edge.” (p. 4)

“First, bubbles follow an approximately symmetrical track, in which the spike in asset values is followed by a collapse of roughly similar scale and duration. If this holds true now, we are in for a very long and nasty period of retreat.” (p. 17)

The report says the credit super-cycle that entered into crisis/deflation? in 2008 had been building for 30 years. So if the deflation of the bubble takes the same amount of time as the inflating of the bubble, we are in for hard economic times for the next 30 years, at best.

But the report says Western economies will never return to their pre-2008 strength:

“If the analysis set out in this report is right, we are nearing the end of a period of more than 250 years in which growth has been ‘the assumed normal’. There have been setbacks, of course, but the near-universal assumption has been that economic growth is the usual state of affairs, a rule to which downturns (even on the scale of the 1930s) are the exceptions. That comfortable assumption is now in the process of being over-turned.” (p. 11)

“Unfortunately, this rise in inflation was masked by ever-more-misleading official data, such that real interest rates turned negative. Comparing American government bond yields with real (rather than officially-reported) inflation suggests that effective rates probably turned negative as long ago as 1996.” (p. 31)

jesse:Forget “the spin, but for rhetoric’s sake I’ll put it in caps: “BULLS” NEED HEALTHY PRICE GAINS IN THE SPRING OR CHANCES ARE IT WILL BE VEWY VEWY BAD IN THE FALL.”

that’s right bears. you just have to wait 8 more months. you know those 12, 7, 5 years you have been waiting to buy a house? it’s almost over… you just have to wait 8 more months and we’ll start seeing price declines. then you’ll have to wait 7 more years for prices to bottom ( 2001 levels according to patriotz, vreaa, and the usual suspects ).

Transunion reports that BC is starting to slow (top out) in personal debt increase. BC is highest but had the lowest increase in Canada. It appears the increase in debt Canada wide per month was roughly $125 per month extra in 2012. I wonder what does $125/mo typically buy these days? What was the must have expense besides home upgrades and iphones?

I’m rooting for them. Hopefully they can hit some sort of record that surpasses modern Greece or even ancient Rome before it completely collaped! Burn baby burn!

Bull! Bull! Bull! Says: “then you’ll have to wait 7 more years for prices to bottom”

Sounds about right. That 7 years will be much more painful for you than the average bear waiting to buy. After all our net worth isn’t evaporating before our eyes. Just ask the average home owner in the US how the last 7 years has been. Should be fun as a spectator.

I really hope this is a big listings month so that the RE board and associations will be forced to STFU with their new mantra: sellers are pulling listings because they don’t have to sell and they won’t settle for a price they’re not happy with….blah blah blah.

“Both economic and fiscal reporting have been subjected to incremental massage and deliberate obfuscation to the point where policymakers, investors and the public really have no accurate conception of our economic predicament.

Data distortion can be divided into two categories. Economic data has been undermined by decades of methodological change which have distorted the statistics to the point where no really accurate data is available for the critical metrics of inflation, growth, output, unemployment or debt. Fiscal data, meanwhile, obscures the true scale of government obligations.

Much of the detailed analysis provided here is drawn from the United States, but this requires a cautionary note. It is NOT our contention that the US is the worst culprit where misleading statistics are concerned. Rather, the raw data required for an unravelling of statistical distortion is more readily available in the US than in other countries which lack America’s data transparency. Additionally, the United States is fortunate in that it possesses analysts willing and able to untangle the statistical mess (even if few policymakers are any more prepared than their overseas counterparts to listen to the uncomfortable conclusions resulting from these analysts’ labours).”

I have spoken to a couple people as of late who bought townhouses in 2007, 2008 in the suburbs. They thought they were pretty smart for a few years, but I can tell you they’re feeling some regret. One said to me the other day, “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He’s now considering selling, even though he knows he won’t get what he paid in 2007. He should come out with some equity if he sells now, but not much, and if prices decline another year I doubt he comes out with any equity. I got the feeling he’s going to list it soon at an aggressive price and take whatever offer he gets. He wants out, he only bought as he thought it was a good idea and now that he sees the risk of loss he just wants out.

Its funny cause I’ve brought up the risks a couple times over the years but he was never willing to listen to anything, now he was happy to listen. Seems to me the party might be winding down and the hangover starting. And no, I don’t have any regrets from not participating.

My comments on the excerpt on data distortion I just posted from Perfect Storm:

-His point that the US has more data transparency is also my experience doing research in my field. It is easier to get data on the US than on Canada.

-This guy is giving a huge nod to bear bloggers similar to the ones on sites like VCI! He is thanking the American “analysts willing and able to untangle the statistical mess”. That sounds like bear bloggers who present us with their well reasoned analysis on the blogosphere because mainstream sources would never report this stuff. To those who contribute data and analysis to the VCI website, I would take this as a pat on the back. You guys are doing the important job of shining a little bit of truth, sanity, and sound logic to this little fiefdom of British Columbia, which has its own problem of distorted data released by real estate boards and banks and other vested interests.

CRA told us last Wednesday that almost one-half of HBP participants (47%) “paid less than the full required repayment amount in tax year 2011.” (2011 is the latest data available.)

I don’t think it’s remotely palatable for the gov to wind down the HBP, bad as repayment stats may be.

I also wonder what the trend is in those repayment stats. Could an increase there be a predictor of higher defaults to come? If household books aren’t balancing, then an income tax hit will be preferable to stiffing the bank.

I’m taking about the market in general, you’re talking about specific properties.

There are always people who overpay. People who bought town-houses in Langley and the outer burbs in 2007-2008 should be kicking themselves. They over paid for a small home in an area that requires long commutes. It’s the worst of both worlds for them. If you are going to live in the outer burbs buy a big lot and enjoy yourself. No one is going to pay top dollar for a small place in the boonies.

“Sounds about right. That 7 years will be much more painful for you than the average bear waiting to buy. After all our net worth isn’t evaporating before our eyes. Just ask the average home owner in the US how the last 7 years has been. Should be fun as a spectator.”

lol. I’ve heard all that before. Let’s see how it works out. For your sake I hope we are still alive when prices got to 2001 levels.

Australian Homebuilders Can’t Give Them Away: Mortgages
Australian homebuilders are resorting to discounts, gift cards and help with mortgage payments to lure reticent buyers.
Stockland (SGP), Australia’s biggest residential developer, is giving rebates and gift cards of as much as A$30,000 ($31,300) in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales states. Devine Ltd. (DVN) is matching deposits in South Australia and taking over mortgage payments for as long as a year in Melbourne. Peet Ltd. (PPC) has been offering discounts of as much as A$50,000 in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria.
Central bank interest rate cuts of 1.75 percentage points since November 2011 have failed to spur housing demand amid slowing job growth. New home sales in December were 6.6 percent below the level of a year earlier, and loan approvals to build or buy new homes the same month were 31 percent below an October 2009 peak.
“The discounts this time ’round are bigger than we’ve seen before because the response we’ve seen to rate cuts has been far more muted,” said Stuart Cartledge, managing director of Melbourne-based Phoenix Portfolios, part-owned by Cromwell Property Group. (CMW) “Affordability based on mortgage costs has improved, but people are worried about losing their jobs. House buyer confidence isn’t there.”

Is there something about your cultural background that prevents you from considering the profit factor of other investments besides RE? You paint a picture where the only investment in the world is RE.

Here is a chart of something that increased not by 100-200% but 500% and anybody with a few hundred dollars could get in on it.

Furthermore, everyone had the opportunity to participate again on the way down for a few hundred more percent.

These opportunities come up all the time in the finacial markets. So I ask again, why are you pushing your once in a generation measly 100-200% gain as the best use of money? Is there something in your ethnic, cultural, or religious background that prevents you from seeing the opportunity in other investments or the concept of misallocation?

It is a misallocation to bet everything on one roll of the dice. When you go to the casino, do you immediately head for the table where you can bet your entire bankroll on one hand?

It drives me crazy when “experts” speak of a slow decline, flat conditions etc when like you mentioned we are running right up there with Miami and Las Vegas in terms of month over month drop from peak

Other than a little online blurb in the Province there’s been nothing else on MSM about this a$$hole. Every day the first news story is yet another drunk hockey rioter with no priors who gets 30 days house arrest – big deal – when real criminals like this and others have wreaked more death and misery in Canada than any rioter ever could. And it’s taken 17 years to come to trial to have the chance to deport the bastard when he was a known criminal to begin with! What’s really on trial here is the Canadian government. Can they do what is necessary and then pass laws to prevent this in the future? If the Conservatives want my vote in 3 years they will.

Nice graph. If we continue that trajectory, most of the damage will be done in 2014. In less than 2 years from now, you could begin making the case to buy. But even after a 40% drop, RE will probably just barely outpace inflation like it has historically. There’s also the dual headwind of rising rates & downsizing boomers.

[The Bank of Canada] can’t afford to prevent Canadians from borrowing what they can’t afford to pay back.

…right up until the deus ex machina popped out of the clouds…

It’s up to the citizen to solve this mess. Canadians should absolutely stop borrowing money unless they are absolutely confident that they can afford to pay off the interest when — not if, when — interest rates begin to return to normal.

More important than HCG / MIC dividend announcements is they are also reporting financial results.

That BC is now melting down / collapsing province-wide, must be having an effect on MIC. By my estimate about 25% of their book is backstopping BC high loan-to-value mortgages. Someone might ask them about it on their call. Employment in Whistler, Okanagan, Vancouver island, Kootenays is weak. House prices in these areas down 20% from 2007 peak. There must be mounting foreclosure pressure there. And the severity of losses for MIC must be large. People I know who work in bankruptcy practices in Vancouver have never been busier.

All we need is for one auditor to force one board into a moment of candor about losses and the SHTF for all of the risk-bearing Canadian mortgage financials. Either next week or in May, but it’s coming.

MIC.TO should be this week if consistent with previous years. Let’s see if they opt for malfeasance instead of disclosure like smoothing over one more quarter …hoping for a miracle. We can also see if the dividend amount was worth the $3-4 premium that was paid recently in the $19-24 run up.

For a study in investor psychology I think HCG.TO is even more remarkable at this point. I would love to harness the mental disturbance responsible for bidding up a mortgage finance stock that pays less than a savings account! In a week or so HCG.TO will announce their paltry 0.25-0.4% quarterly if consistent with previous years.

Can someone spell out the case for “higher rates soon”? I really don’t know what is the case for higher rates .

Because household debt spiked 6% at the end of 2012 and 34 million financial illiterates don’t understand that at some point you have to actually pay back the money you borrow. The stupidity of the general population is outweighing the negative affect a stronger loonie would have on whats left of our manufacturing sector. Every time I look at the daily sales I think theres another 84 dumb assholes I will have to bail out in 2 years.

I was listening to the bears but it wasnt until the bulls reached a critical mass that it was time to get out – now when most of the bulls like you are curled up in a fetal position sobbing uncontrollably it will be time to get back in again

Regarding trends in HBP participants not meeting their repayment obligations, I couldn’t find much direct information, but I did find this:
– In 1995, 78,000 out of 229,000 participants failed to meet repayment obligations (76,000 of those making no repayments at all).
– From Canadian Tax Journal, Vol.55, No.1, p.12:

…in 1995, more than a third of hbp holders who were required to make a repayment made none [24] and for later years I estimate that the proportion not rebuilding their RRSPs was in the same range. [25]

If valid, this would put the proportion of HBP participants not meeting their obligations at a stable 1/3 between 1995 and 2007. If that level has risen to 1/2 since then, it’s a considerable jump. If anyone has more concrete data, I’d love to see it.

But what is the mechanism by which the following (a spike in household debt)lead to higher rates? I’m not trying to be a smart-ass; I really don’t get it.

Someone needs to connect the dots.

“Because household debt spiked 6% at the end of 2012 and 34 million financial illiterates don’t understand that at some point you have to actually pay back the money you borrow. The stupidity of the general population is outweighing the negative affect a stronger loonie would have on whats left of our manufacturing sector. Every time I look at the daily sales I think theres another 84 dumb assholes I will have to bail out in 2 years”

This doesn’t matter as long as rents are low. Governments can’t manipulate forever. Take your unused cash and wait for the point when the markets have their fill of the BS. If bonds, they will have some rapid decline convexity at these levels. Canadian dollar could also take a beating. When/if they start to move, go with the trend.

Don’t worry about rates. When the music stops it won’t matter what the overnight rate is. The market will beat the central bank to a bloody pulp and if you are positioned you will make in a few months 10 times what the most successful RE flipper or speculator ever did with the same capital over 10 years.

“The market will beat the central bank to a bloody pulp and if you are positioned you will make in a few months 10 times what the most successful RE flipper or speculator ever did with the same capital over 10 years.”

Could you enlighten us on what kind of position would make such outsized returns? Thanks,

You probably already know the answer but I will indulge. Suppose CAD moves 10 cents. With $50k account you can control/scale into $2M. 10% of $2M is $200K.

There are instruments which track the various maturities of bonds with the same sort of leverage.

The trick is to be patient and fluid. Thus, I say don’t worry about what the central bank says the overnight rate is. Just look at the rate relative to important exchange rates (or commodity prices). A 1% overnight rate is a different thing when the dollar is only worth 90 cents. The government can’t hide. If the central bank timing is wrong, it is exactly then when your timing will be right.

In the meantime, there are some nice snacks that will easily pay your rent. Maybe these are even ones related to firms that are stepping into bubble lending with insufficient hedging. See my earlier post.

Surrey is the “centre of the action” for Metro Vancouver’s Indian community. Retailers in Vancouver’s Punjabi Market are relocating to Surrey. From the Vancouver Sun:

“The distinctive yellow street sign for the Punjabi Market at 48th and Main has faded so much you can hardly read it, which is symbolic of the changing fortunes of Vancouver’s premier South Asian shopping street.

Several businesses have moved out in the last couple of years, leaving some high-profile vacancies in the heart of the market, which has run along Main from 48th to 53rd since the 1970s.

Last year it was the Frontier Bridal Boutique, which left for a new location in Surrey after four decades on Main…

The Guru Bazaar purchased its new location in Surrey.

“That’s the future,” said Khurana. “We could have purchased something on Main street for a similar price, maybe a little bit more. But … where are the customers? Why do you want to be in a place (that is) kind of out of the way, why not be in the centre of the action?”

Anil Nanda of Nanda Jewellers said that established businesses like Nanda do well at the Punjabi Market because they have a long-term clientele.

“We have customers coming in from Surrey, from Langley, from Poco, everywhere,” he said. “But for smaller businesses, some of the clothing stores, the movie shops and whatnot, they’re definitely suffering because of the lack of foot traffic.

“We have suffered from that, too. Before there were 22 jewelry stores on Main Street, now there’s a handful, maybe five or six. Some closed down, but a lot of them have opened in Surrey.”

“We could have purchased something on Main street for a similar price, maybe a little bit more. But … where are the customers? Why do you want to be in a place (that is) kind of out of the way, why not be in the centre of the action?”

The rise of this kind of thinking is a big shake up to how we think about Metro Vancouver. Rents are higher in City of Vancouver due to price premium to be in a central location. When people start regarding Surrey as the “centre of the action” then you can’t justify a rent premium in Vancouver relative to Surrey anymore because Vancouver isn’t as central anymore to the population and to the economy. When businesses snub locations in Vancouver because they want to be in Surrey closer to their customers that tells you that the population base and the economy in this metropolitan region are shifting east towards Surrey.

Another Genworth MIC quarter in the books. Nothing to see here, folks, move along now…

Well, if you look at the only page of the MIC financial statements that has any bearing on what is really happening in their business (note 4 in the footnotes) one does see a few interesting details.

Real estate acquired, that’s their term for a foreclosure, is up 48% y-o-y.

Also, if one carefully extracts the quarter-by-quarter trend in losses on “real estate held” one will see that the $76 million worth of foreclosures sold in the 4th quarter were sold at a price 19.5% below the insured value of the properties. In other words, if MIC had insured a Yaletown condo mortgage at $1 million, when it came time to sell the foreclosed property, they only got $805,000 back.

That loss on RE foreclosed either indicates that a) the prices of the properties being foreclosed upon is falling hard, or b) that the properties were never worth their appraised value in the first place. Knowing a little about the hoodlums involved here, I would guess it is a combination of both.

What might give the bulls some relief is that the foreclosure volumes are still quite low (although the trend is strongly up and to the right). My guess is that the “Alpine credit” type kiting lenders are helping to temporarily prop up a number of truly desperate borrowers. Either that or the banks themselves are buying in to the “prices won’t go down if no one lists” meme. Like every other prop-job, it won’t last.

Interesting to see what happens to MIC stock tomorrow. The company exhibits a complete lack of sensible loss reserve accounting (akin to a P&C insurer being six hours away from a massive hurricane and yet not reserving for losses because they haven’t had any lately). Will this accounting-based “earnings” report fool the QE-impaired market again, or will the serious longs start connecting the fairly obvious dots and start building some future losses into the valuation?

My remarks were only illustrative. The bankroll amount, whatever it is considered expendable in the RE ponzi palace or flipping scheme would be the amount expendable in the liquid macro market instrument(s). The difference is loss will be limited to the specified amount and much more leverage is available when needed.

As explained above, you would not put on the entire position equal to net worth. Some expertise is required other than listening to stock tips, reading newsletters, or ginned up quarterly reports. Money management, market timing, economic calendar, etc are important. If you don’t know how or can’t understand what I’m saying then please DON’T try what mclovin suggests.

Nevertheless, the ability to bet against central bank manipulation is available on demand and in massive scale compared to RE or stock equity alone. I do recommend trading the opportunity as it arises including opportunities in equities. As suggested, if central planning fails to anticipate a crisis, those that know how are in the position to indirectly drain the accounts of those who think their RE or stock investment is safe and beyond reach.

I’ll let Daniel Day-Lewis’ character from “There Will Be Blood” explain in a more dramatic way. “Drainage!!!!!”

Generally, for each year of your repayment period, you have to repay 1/15 of the total amount you withdrew, until the full amount is repaid to your RRSPs.

If you fail to pay off your 15th in a given year, the excess amount gets included in your taxable income. That makes it generally undesirable to fail to repay (though there are probably some cases like income splitting or employment changes where this is good math).

Since some sales can have a long closing period (3 months) the impact of CNY sales may be much longer than a couple of weeks. Although with so many units vacant now the impact this year should be quicker than prior years.

I was so irritated by Global TV reporting on real estate a few nights ago that I cranked out another letter/missile plus target media regulatory agencies to aim at. I’ve posted the letter and email addresses for complaints against media reporting in the Vancouver Peak forum. Copy, paste and fire at will!

We all remember the false and misleading behaviour of the news media during the technology “bubble” of the late 1990s and early 2000s. In both the US and Canada many people lost substantial sums of money due to the cheerleading of certain media outlets. After the dust settled it was found that many of these media outlets and “economic correspondents” had conflicting interests – owning the stock of companies they were actively reporting on and actively pumping.

The same is happening today in Canada with news reporting of the current real estate market. Many reporters and news organizations, most notably Vancouver’s branch of Global TV (CTV network), are delivering hyped up media and false/misleading reports on the status of the real estate market in BC. I believe this is also true for CTV’s Toronto reporting. A defining characteristics of such coverage is (i) one-sided reporting (i.e. “prices are about to take off”), and (ii) interviews with real estate agents and staff of real estate companies who have a clear conflict of interest in the current market. The behaviour goes beyond sensationalist headlines designed to boost circulation and sell ads – these news correspondents appear to be actively pumping the market for personal gain.

This is a request for you to improve the transparency of media reporting on real estate investment holdings.

Please request Global TV and other major news organizations adopt the following simple policy: All news reporters covering the real estate market must disclose if they own investment property in the region that is covered in their report. Note disclosure of their principle residence is not required, only investment properties that they do not live in.

Similar policies are used for stock market analyst reporting on TV and radio every day. This is not a significant expansion of existing conflict of interest policies, and real estate investment property should be monitored and tracked similar to other types of investments.

Examples of poor journalism and potential conflict of interest can be found here:
– links to “news” stories provided in Vancouver Peak forum

Here’s how news broke on the Sunshine Coast this past Wednesday... Quote:Wakefield Construction bankruptcy ‘a great loss’ Rik Jespersen, The Local Weekly, Sechelt. January 21, 2015. The local construction industry has been rocked by the financial collapse of Wakefield Construction, one of the Sunshine Coast’s biggest and most prolific building companies. Word leaked out Jan. […]

two of these charts concern us: the decline in economic growth in China, and the decline in Chinese property prices: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econo...t-now.html Might Vancouver be considered a "fourth tier" Chinese property market? Jimmy

The Vancouver Island Real Estate Board released its 2013 Buyer Profile at the end of July/beginning of August which I discovered and downloaded the other day when I grabbed the August stats package. I presented data from the 2005-2012 Buyer Profiles back on July 20, 2013. I am going to take a look at the […]

Given the ever-present, and insistent, discourse about the HPI and its importance as evidence of continuing real-estate-market strength in the lower British Columbia mainland market, I felt that I should point out something that is inherent in the HPI: it is a LAGGING indicator! So, get out your notebooks boys and girls and find your […]

Hey everyone, There are many sale center for new condos and developments all over GVA (Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, Surrey, etc). This is my question for everybody here: What are the metrics, or information that you look at, when you visit the new condo sale centers? I will start off with my list: 1. Developer (reputation, […]

Guys Update on where I'm looking - headlines followed by very brief, kindergarten-level analysis, ie nowhere near Skook's incredible levels of scrutiny: Headlines: - inventory at a three year-high (85 properties for sale in my search area) EDIT** - now at 87 as of Saturday 7/5/14...** - one or two properties now on offer at […]

This is a difficult note to write because I tend to be very private when it comes to personal matters; however, to truly understand my silence this past month and what lies ahead I believe I must tell more than I would like to. I am a very sick little marsupial. Two days ago, I […]

Hi Gang I thought Skook, Navier and some others might have some perspectives on this. First of all, the situation: after a long period of inflation, many of us here recognise that certain peripheral markets are topping out, to put it mildly, or in slow multi-year decline. And yet certain sellers, or their realtors, are […]